1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to mechanical devices which are capable of treating flooring surfaces, and it more particularly relates to a device which can be wheeled along on top of a flooring surface, such as a rug positioned over a floor surface or a wooden or tiled floor surface itself, to either clean the surface, remove wax from the surface, or wax and buff the surface, i.e., at the option of the operator.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Mechanical fabric and floor surface spray and cleaning devices are of course well known and are widely used, and such devices are fully shown and described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,127,913; 4,014,067; 4,019,218; 4,023,223; 2,885,713; 3,962,745; 3,992,747 and 4,009,728. However, in all of the known spray cleaning devices the operator has a very active and laborsome function in the operation of the devices, e.g., that of holding the hollow stem of the cleaning wand and manually passing the cleaning head of the wand in separate passes across the surface to be cleaned. The operator may also be required to simultaneously squeeze a trigger attached to the wand so that cleaning liquid will be discharged ahead of a vacuum slit as the cleaning head is moved in the desired direction along the surface to be cleaned (the trigger being released as the cleaning head is returned to a point adjacent its original starting point), or else the operator may be required to squeeze a trigger to alternate discharge of treating solution and then creation of a vacuum in a cleaning head in separate strokes as the cleaning head is sequentially passed over the same area to be cleaned. In any event, much operator work is required and the cleaning process is slow and inefficient since an individual cleaning head must be passed in a separate motion at least one time over each zone of the surface to be cleaned for each individual cleaning operation.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a flooring surface treating device which is much more efficient than the prior art devices, which requires much less operator work input, and which can more thoroughly treat a given zone in a given amount of time than the conventional stroke-type devices.